Bye Bye Birdie (Columbia Pictures film)
Bye Bye Birdie is a musical comedy film, it is an adaptation of the stage production of the same name. The screenplay was written by Michael Stewart and Irving Brecher, with music by Charles Strouse and lyrics by Lee Adams. Directed by George Sidney, the film version starred Dick Van Dyke, Maureen Stapleton, Janet Leigh, Paul Lynde, Bobby Rydell, Ann-Margret, and Jesse Pearson, who plays the role of teen idol Conrad Birdie. It also features a cameo appearence by Ed Sullivan, who appears as himself, the host of the popular, long-running CBS TV variety show. The story was inspired by the phenomenon of popular singer Elvis Presley and his being drafted into the United States Army in 1957. It provoked a media circus that included a contest in which Presley would give a specially selected member of the Women’s Army Corps ‘one last kiss’ before he was deployed to Germany for 18 months. Following his honorable discharge with the rank of sergeant from the military in 1960, Presley was still a huge celebrity whose star only burned brighter after his service. Not only did he get back to recording music, he was also put on a heavy filmmaking schedule, and starred in formulaic musical comedies that were more or less dismissed by critics, despite Presley’s request to take on more serious film roles. The film is credited with making Ann-Margret a superstar during the mid-1960s, leading to her appearing with Presley in Viva Las Vegas. The soundtrack was released by RCA Victor in 1964. In 2006, the film was ranked number 38 on Entertainment Weekly's list of the 50 Best High School Movies. Despite the film's box office success, it opened to mixed reviews, with unfavorable comparisons to the Broadway production. Some noted its mediocre production values, rewriting of the script, changes in the musical score, and disappointing choreography in some songs. The film was released in theaters on April 4, 1963. Plot We open on a blue background as a newspaper comes spinning up. On it is a picture of Conrad Birdie, a popular rock and roll star in Elvis-ish rockstar garb, with the headline "CONRAD BIRDIE DRAFTED!" and the sub-line "Conrad Birdie, guitar-playing singer, the idol of teenagers all over the nation, is being drafted into the U.S. Army." The paper then flies offscreen, and we see Kim McAfee in a yellow dress against the blue screen, singing. She is very upset that her celebrity crush just received an army draft notice which has devastated her, and she promises that she will write letters to him each day. Albert Peterson is an unsuccessful songwriter in his family's business, although he has a doctorate in biochemistry. He schemes with his secretary and long-suffering girlfriend Rosie DeLeon to have Conrad sing a song Albert has written, but Conrad's conscription puts a halt to the plan. Rosie convinces Ed Sullivan to have Conrad appear on his television show by concocting a big scheme for an ultimate gigantic promotion idea for advance publicity to capitalize on the situation of the most popular and beloved musical icon becoming a young war veteran. She explains that before Conrad goes into the big cold army for two long years...he sings a rockabilly song called "One Last Kiss" and then bestows a very public farewell kiss on one fabulously lucky high school girl randomly chosen from one million two hundred thousand hysterical adoring teenage female fans in the Conrad Birdie Fan Club. And, Rosie states that she built the entire appearance around the song and created a theme around it: first, they start off with Ed's intro to the lucky girl, her good luck speech to Conrad, then Conrad socks over a plug for army enlistments, bangs into the song, and he tops it off with the big kisseroo. Once that is a success, Albert will be free to marry Rosie, despite his meddlesome mother Mae's long history of ensuring nothing will come between her and her beloved son. Sweet Apple, Ohio, is chosen as the location for Conrad's farewell performance. Rosie heads down to the national headquarters of the Conrad Birdie fan club, where women in pink smocks and one man stuff envelopes. The random lucky girl chosen is Kim McAfee, the fifteen-year-old president and recording secretary of Conrad Birdie Fan Club Number 2748. The operator tries to get through to Kim for nearly three-quarters of an hour to tell her about the great prize of being selected from all the teenagers in the United States to be kissed by Conrad on The Ed Sullivan Show on Sunday night, but the line's busy because Kim's gabbing on the telephone with her best friend, Ursula Merkle. Kim is telling Ursula that Hugo Peabody gave her his class pin on the backseat of that lovely yellow school bus, so they now have a permanent understanding and are going steady because it took their relationship to the next level, so that everyone knows they are a couple who have a pre-engagement commitment to each other because it's expected they will marry later on. Ursula is shocked that Kim is resigning from the fan club, giving up both the pledge and the Conrad Birdie fangirl scream of "AAAAAAA!" when he sings on television, but Kim insists that she will still play his records. The teenagers of Sweet Apple, blissfully unaware of their town's impending fame, are spending time on the telephone catching up on the latest gossip. Kim feels grown up, and declares that she knows how it feels to be a woman, and as a result of this, Kim refers to her parents by their first names, Harry and Doris. She does this because she claims that times are changing, so it's the modern way to call your mother and father by their first names, and makes the parents and children more like friends. And she doesn't want to be left behind with the "old folks." Mrs. McAfee looks so upset when she hears Kim say "Doris" instead of calling her "Mom", while Mr. McAfee looks up from his newspaper, mutters "yeah", then laughs mirthlessly, after his daughter calls him "Harry" and not "Dad." However, upon hearing that she was chosen to receive Conrad's farewell kiss, Kim's expression changes from that of a poised woman to a dazed child, and is acting like a gaga little goof who became an immortal queen, as she slowly puts down the phone. Then, she says weakly in a very small voice, "Conrad Birdie is coming here to Sweet Apple to kiss me goodbye?" Kim then shouts for her mother, and Mrs. McAfee grabs Kim in her arms and asks her daughter, "Baby, what is it?! What's wrong?!", and Kim says, "Conrad Birdie's coming here to kiss me, Mommy!" And Mrs. McAfee answers with, "That's nice, dear. Now, you just put your head on Mommy's shoulder. I never thought I'd say it...but God bless Conrad Birdie!" On the day Conrad arrives in town, the teenage girls of the Conrad Birdie fan club excitedly sing their anthem to him in preparation of their hero's arrival to the small little town of Sweet Apple. But the boys in town, totally against the attentions the girls are showing Birdie, sing counterpoint about their hatred of Conrad because they despise him for their girls' love for him. Their argument comes to a head when the two mobs meet together. In a clever bit of direction, Hugo and Kim quickly become the ambassadors for each side. At the town hall, Conrad receives a hero's welcome in Sweet Apple, as the mayor says "And so it is with great pride and prejudice, as well as the usual pomp and circumstance, that I welcome you to our fair city and present you with this fourteen-carat solid gold key so generously donated by men at the Sweet Apple Brass Works. And as I present this key to you, Conrad Birdie, welcome to Sweet Apple!" Sweet Apple becomes a very popular place, but some of the local adults are unhappy with the sudden celebrity, especially after Conrad shows off his hip-thrusting moves while his song "Honestly Sincere" causes every female and a few males to faint. Conrad becomes a guest in the McAfee house and irritates Mr. McAfee by being rude and selfish. Under pressure from the town's notable citizens, Mr. McAfee is unwilling to allow his daughter to kiss Conrad on television, but Albert placates him by telling him that their whole family will be on Sullivan's TV show. Mr. McAfee later calls the mayor on the phone to tell him about being on TV and says, "Look, mayor, you're gonna be on TV too. They want you to make a short speech on Ed Sullivan. You could become a statewide face, mayor. I'll plug you up for governor." Albert reveals to Mr. McAfee that he is actually a biochemist who has developed a miracle supplement: a super speed pill called "Speed-Up" that increases the work output of domestic animals because it speeds up the reflexes, so an ox could outrun a racehorse, while a hen will lay three eggs a day; they test it on the family's pet tortoise, which speeds off out the door. Mr. McAfee is a fertilizer salesman and he sees a great future for himself in partnership with Albert for marketing this pill. Hugo feels threatened by Conrad and worries that Kim likes Conrad more than she likes him, but Kim reassures him that he is the one boy for her because he is the only one she loves, while Rosie feels like Albert does not appreciate her, so Albert persuades her to be happy. Albert's mother shows up, distressed to find Albert and Rosie together. Mr. McAfee is also agitated, not liking the way Conrad is taking over his house. They lament what is wrong with kids these days. During rehearsal for the broadcast, an impatient Conrad kisses Kim and she faints, while Hugo is hurt over this, so he and Kim break up. Hugo goes to Maude's Roadside Retreat, hoping to get drunk and asks proprietor Charles F. Maude for a pint of bourbon, gin, a double rocks on the scotch, a beer, or a little vodka malted, and tries to convince the bartender that he's 32 by saying "I'm way over 21. I only look young from too much drinkin'." However, Mr. Maude can tell that he's under age and refuses to serve him. Albert is told that the Russian ballet has switched to a different dance that needs extra time, therefore eliminating his song and the farewell kiss to Kim. Albert does request to have the ballet shortened to at least four minutes so there will be enough time for Conrad to sing his song, but the arrogant ballet manager initially refuses to have it shortened as he believes that cutting time would mean "artistic sabotage" to such a classic piece of work. Albert decides to drown his sorrows at Mr. Maude's bar, because his attempts to convince the ballet's manager to shorten its performance failed. When he gets there, he discovers Mae there and asks her what she is doing in this place, Mae replies that she playing canasta with Mr. Maude because she got lonesome. When Albert asks Mae why is she consorting with the bartender, she reminds him looks aren't everything, and explains that Mr. Maude is a 100% gentlemen and was a widower three times. Rosie is fed up with Albert and his mother, so, hoping to forget Albert, she interrupts, dances, and flirts with a room full of men at a shriners convention meeting being held in Maude's private dining room, and they begin a wild dance. Albert rescues her from the crazed shriners when he overhears her singing "Everything is Rosie. Cha, cha, cha. 'Cause my name is Rosie.", he realizes that she's singing the song he wrote for her, which was only eight bars because he never finished it.The next day, Rosie comes up with a solution to get back Conrad's spot on The Ed Sullivan Show that evening. Before the Moscow Ballet performs "The Rose Adagio" from Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty, Rosie has a brilliant plan to get the Moscow Ballet to shorten their number: she slips one dose of Albert's pills into the milk of the orchestra's conductor to hopefully speed up the ballet and it works! She does this by pretending to be a photographer from American Ballet magazine, and tells him "We want a picture of the world's greatest conductor, Maestro Borov, drinking this milk. You see, our President has asked us to drink more milk...and it would be a goodwill gesture. All right. Here we go. Drink up. That's it. Now keep drinking until I frame you perfectly. All right. Bottoms up. That's it. Very good. Gotcha!" The audience thinks it is the slowest dance they ever saw, since they think the ballet dancers move like turtles. However, it becomes the shortest ballet in history and they finish early because it causes the speeding ballet dancers to put out a brilliant, wildly rapid, and unexpected bit of a burlesque performance, which not only amuses the audience, but also offends the Russians, and places Conrad back on the show to sing "One Last Kiss". There is a last-minute scramble to fill air time, and Conrad does get to appear on the show and sing "One Last Kiss." Conrad is dressed in green-sequinned army uniform. He holds up his guitar and strums it once. Then, the band strikes up to play an old-time rock 'n' roll style song as Conrad begins singing in his signature Elvis-esque voice. As the band does an instrumental, he starts dancing around the stage in a very funky way, because the way he wiggles his waist is so suggestive that causes him to have swiveling hips. The band finishes their solo, and he begins to sing again. After the song, Conrad takes a comb from his pocket, combs his pompadour bouffant hairdo, and he puts one hand around Kim's back and the other around her hips, and swoops her off her feet as he attempts to symbolically bestow a farewell kiss on her. At that moment, skinny little Hugo, who can’t weigh more than a buck ten, can bear no more, runs onstage and rushes in front of the camera, swings in, and interrupts the actual kiss by knocking out Conrad with one single punch in front of millions of people on live TV, so there's no kiss for Kim, no hit song for Albert, and major embarrassment for Ed Sullivan. Albert tells Mae that he and Rosie are going to Niagara Falls, and Mae agrees by telling him "Well...it's about time", and Albert is very happy to hear that he is free to marry Rosie now. Mr. Maude tells Albert that he wants to do things proper and asks if he can have the honor of being Albert's stepfather, and Albert gives his blessing to allow this to happen, then Mae reveals that she is now married to Mr. Maude, even though she only met him the previous evening. Mae and Mr. Maude leave for Akron, where he has to open a new bar and he wants her to throw out the first beer can. Albert and Rosie fall back in love and he proposes because he’s gonna make millions off his new “diet” pill formula, and Kim and Hugo reunite as they show off their teeth and fling their arms about their necks, which means that when Hugo decides to propose to Kim, she will accept him. Kim sings, "Everything is Hugo, I will go where you'll go. With a boy like Hugo, how could I be blue?", Hugo sings, "We will be so cozy, just like Al and Rosie.", and their duet verse is "And we're gonna mosey in a hot rod built for two." All of the couples live happily ever after, and everyone’s happy – except Conrad Birdie, who’s stationed in Germany and the laughingstock of the army, because no one wants to buy a record of a guy with a glass jaw. And so, we close out the movie the same way we opened, with Kim... This time, she bids Conrad a fond goodbye as he has been enlisted into the Army and no longer exists to her, so she fully gotten over the crush that she had on him in the beginning of the film. Cast of characters Janet Leigh as Rosie DeLeon Dick Van Dyke as Albert F. Peterson Ann-Margret as Kim MacAfee Jesse Pearson as Conrad Birdie Paul Lynde as Harry MacAfee Mary LaRoche as Doris MacAfee Bryan Russell as Randolph MacAfee Maureen Stapleton as Mae Peterson Bobby Rydell as Hugo Peabody Michael Evans as Claude Paisley Robert Paige as Bob Precht Gregory Morton as Maestro Borov Ben Astar as the ballet manager Milton Frome as Mr. Maude Ed Sullivan as himself Trudi Ames as Ursula Linda Kaye Henning as Nancy Peter Menefee as Harvey Johnson John Daly as himself Kim Darby as a teenager Song list "Bye Bye, Birdie" - In the opening sequence's first rendition for the on-screen prelude at the very beginning of the film as a prologue, Kim McAfee is alone on-screen, wearing a bright yellow dress with her flaming red hair blowing in the wind, while standing against a bright blue background and singing the newly-written the title song "Bye Bye, Birdie" directly to the camera that pushes in and pulls back on her, while she is running towards and away from it in a coquettish flirtatious dance. She just discovered that teen idol Conrad Birdie has been drafted, and is an immature, whining, and petulant little girl who is a young siren that has an unhealthy obsession with a star, and pours out her anguish, as she laments how dull her life will become without her un-ending adulation for Conrad, as she bids farewell to the army bound rock star. As a result of this, she blows off her boyfriend, Hugo Peabody, for Conrad's attention, the man she wants and can't have, and loses her mind whenever he's around by fangirling over him. "The Telephone Hour" - The film version of the song “The Telephone Hour” incorporates split and multi-screen photography, after Ursula calls her friends and they call their friends. Suddenly, every teenager of Sweet Apple, including a suave fellow on a car phone who is surrounded by several tennis girls, is on every telephone catching up on the latest gossip: Hugo and Kim got pinned, so they have a permanent understanding. It also introduces Hugo, who makes an appearance singing, "You don't know how to live, you'd get pinned if you could. Kim and I are in love, going steady for good!", because he is trying to convince his buddies that he isn't off his gourd getting hooked up. In the musical, Helen, Nancy, Alice, Margie, Harvey Johnson, and a teen chorus are on the phones, and they are each indescribably contorted and perched into odd positions, including slouching, kneeling, crouching, or simply stretched out on the floor, that defy gravity and physiology, while being seated in different cutout cubicles of a large and multi-colored egg box-like shelf unit with square-shaped sections where the actors could occupy while performing. As each actor sang their part, the light in their section would be turned on then off as the next actor sang. "How Lovely To Be A Woman" - In this song, Kim reflects on how happy she is with her maturity, believing at 16 she has fully reached adulthood, and celebrates coming of age while changing her clothes. "We Love You, Conrad" - This satirical theme appears twice the film. The first time it is performed at a dirge pace, where several female protesters are outraged with the government's decision to draft their idol, so they take their issue to the Capitol Building in Washington DC. For the second and final time, the Conrad Birdie fan club excitedly sing in preparation of their hero's arrival to the small little town of Sweet Apple. "We Hate You, Conrad" - The boys in town, totally against the attentions the girls are showing Conrad, sing counterpoint about their hatred of him through their anti-Birdie rhetoric. "Honestly Sincere" - Conrad sings this 'practical' number to the entire town, while standing on the steps of the clock tower from BACK TO THE FUTURE. It culminates with most of the townsfolk passed out from excitement. "Hymn For A Sunday Evening" - After Mr. McAfee is bribed with an appearance on the Ed Sullivan show, he and his family appear in heavenly blue-ish lighting, dressed in chorus outfits of choir robes while singing this sacred song for their favorite human being, Ed. "One Boy" - In the film, Kim and Hugo perform "One Boy" in the MacAfees' back yard. Trying to suppress Hugo's jealousy, Kim sings he is her "one boy". Hugo breaks in and offers a nice harmony creating a very satisfying sound. Rosie, who is obviously satisfied with their performance, but not so satisfied with Albert, takes on a verse. Finally, Kim joins her in a cleverly photographed finale in which we see the similarity of each woman's plight. In the stage musical, it is sung by a trio that is made up of Kim and two teenagers. "Put On A Happy Face" - In the film, "Put On A Happy Face" is performed by Albert and Rosie in the MacAfees' back yard. This song is a bouncy number because Albert's singing is supported by cute elements of animated smiley faces that he draws in the air, a ghostly dance partner who resembles a duplicate Rosie, and even one set of 'follow the bouncing ball' lyrics, which have no added value to this song. In the stage musical, Albert is at the train station and sings the song to a depressed young girl who is sad because Conrad's going into the army, and claims that she'll be too old for him when he gets out. "Kids" - In the movie, "Kids" was performed in the MacAfee kitchen by Mr. MacAfee, Mae, Albert, and Randolph. The song sets up a conflict of a distrust of children, that for no apparent reason, is totally resolved at the end of the song. In the stage musical, it is performed by Mr. and Mrs. MacAfee in the streets of Sweet Apple after they discover that Kim has run away, and lament how disobedient kids are today. "One Last Kiss" Rehearsal - During rehearsal for the broadcast, Conrad sings "One Last Kiss", then he kisses Kim and she faints. The exact length of the song is 1:20. "A Lot Of Livin' To Do" - In the movie, "A Lot Of Livin' To Do" is performed as a colorful song-and-dance number by Conrad, Kim, and Hugo at a teen dance in the soda shop, where Kim and Hugo are trying to make each other jealous. Conrad introduces this organized and energetic group dance number, which showcases a dance duel between Hugo and Kim. Kim sings "There are men with childhood behind them, handsome men from Yale or Purdue. Older men, and I'm gonna find 'em. I'm a-gonna have fun, gonna be wild, have my own way. I may break a heart a day. Drink champagne as if it were water, pink champagne. And after a few, Daddy, dear, you won't know your daughter. She's got a lot of living to do." Hugo's verse is, "Think I'll be a ring-a-ding drummer, make each week a thousand or two! Gorgeous girls will beg for my number! Hey, I got a lot of living to do! Yes, I'm gonna break out, gonna take off, gonna be free, this town is awfully square for a cat like me! Or I'll be a super jet pilot, fly me high way out in the blue, then they'll see, I'm no shrinking violet. Hey, I got a lot of living to do!" In the stage musical, it is performed by Conrad, Kim, and all the teenagers in the streets of Sweet Apple before they head for the Ice House. Kim's line is "There are men of nineteen or twenty, who are suave, reckless, and true. Older men who give a girl plenty. I've gotta a lot of living to do." "One Last Kiss" - After the preposterous 'super speed' ballet, Conrad croons this song to Kim on The Ed Sullivan Show. However, he doesn't get to sing the entire song because Hugo punches him out of the story. "Rosie" - In the film, "Rosie" is sung in the outdoor theatre after the end of The Ed Sullivan Show by Albert, Rosie, Hugo, and Kim. Albert's mother issues are in the past, so he can now move to his real love, Rosie. His first step to securing her love is finishing the love song he began to compose long before. In the musical, Albert and Rosie sing it at the train station after he reveals to her that he got tickets to Pumpkin Falls, Iowa, where there is an opening in the teaching staff of Pumpkin Falls Middle School, and they prefer the applicant to be married. "Bye Bye, Birdie" Reprise - In the closing sequence's finale/reprise at the very end of the film for an epilogue, Kim has gone through a character arc development with a higher sense of self-awareness by changing her viewpoint and changed into a beautiful grown woman, who has literally let her hair down, is now wiser, and realizes that Conrad isn't all that, and Hugo matters more because her actual boyfriend is what's most important to her. She has now moved past her teenage infatuation of the crush she had felt for Conrad at the beginning of the film, since she wasted her time by being a Birdie groupie who was fangirling over some singer who could care less about her, and goes on continuing with the rest of her life as she saucily bids Conrad a defiant fond goodbye, therefore kindly and sadly wishing him farewell, no longer "boo-hooing" over him, as he has now been enlisted into the army and ceases to exist to her, because now it’s time for her to fly. The following songs were omitted from the film: "An English Teacher" - It went away when Albert's profession was switched to chemistry. In the stage musical, Rosie has long been stuck in a sort of romantic limbo for eight years, so she longs for the Albert she once knew: an aspiring English teacher, before he wrote Conrad Birdie's first hit and abandoned those plans to pursue the seedier music industry. Rosie reminds Albert of this, as she slaps a resignation letter down on Albert's desk, starts to leave, and then blows him a kiss. "A Healthy, Normal, American Boy" - Reporters arrive with questions for Conrad, but Rosie, Albert, and the girls answer for him, pushing away tabloids "What Did I Ever See In Him?" - It continued the relationship set up during the song One Boy. In this song, Rosie and Kim resolve to leave Albert and Hugo, lamenting their stupidity for having fallen in love with them. "Baby, Talk To Me" - In this song, Rosie ends up at Maude's Roadside Retreat and starts flirting with other men, but Albert phones her and begs her to return to him. Albert's beautiful song pleads for Rosie's love and showed growth, but that growth never happens in the film. "Kids" Reprise - Hugo tells the MacAfees and the other parents that the teenagers have gone to the Ice House, and they all declare that they don't know what's wrong with their kids. Randolph joins in, stating that his older sister and the other teens are "so ridiculous and so immature". "Spanish Rose" - This song has Rosie, a natural-born American citizen from Allentown, Pennsylvania, declare she's Spanish and deliberately plays up her Hispanic heritage with an exaggerated comic style to irritate Mae. In the film, most of the song was replaced by dialogue and dance. Trivia The original stage version of Bye Bye Birdie opened at the Martin Beck Theatre in April 1960 to rave reviews, and at the 1961 Tony Awards, Bye Bye Birdie bagged four awards: Best Performance By A Featured Actor In A Musical, Best Direction Of A Musical, Best Choreography, and the biggest Tony of them all, Best Musical. With Bye Bye Birdie’s popularity, its creators, Charles Strouse, Lee Adams, and Michael Stewart tried to capitalize on its success and wrote a sequel called Bring Back Birdie that opened in 1981. The sequel focused on Conrad Birdie, who disappeared after being discharged from the Army and tried to make a comeback by performing at the Grammy Awards. Unfortunately, this sequel didn’t fare as well as its predecessor, and closed after only four performances. The original 1960 stage musical included 17 songs, the 1963 movie was used as a vehicle to promote Ann-Margret, featured more songs and solos from a supporting character, used 12 of the original tunes, and added a new title song that appears at the very beginning and the very end, and the 1995 TV version movie version, a different, longer, and truer interpretation that was a much more faithful adaptation of the stage musical's basic storyline, included the 17 original songs, a re-arranged and re-written version of the title song written for the movie, plus three new songs that were added for this version and not included in any previous one. Dick Van Dyke and Paul Lynde, both veterans of the Broadway hit, reprised their roles in the film version, but in a typical tale of stage-to-screen heartbreak, Susan Watson, Lynde's original Birdie daughter, who created the role of Kim in the stage version, didn't appear in the film and was replaced by Ann-Margret. Van Dyke and Lynde were displeased with it because they felt it had become too much of a vehicle for Ann-Margret. Van Dyke complained to his wife "They're making it a vehicle for Ann-Margret, and turning it into 'The Ann-Margret Show!' Those of us who did the show were disappointed with the movie. But then we just said, ‘Oh, well, this is what Hollywood does.", while Lynde quipped "I was in Bye Bye Birdie on Broadway – played the father. I was in the film version, but they should have retitled it 'Hello, Ann-Margret!', since they cut several of my and the other actors' best scenes and shot new ones for her so she could do her teenage-sex-bombshell act." Despite portraying the mother of Dick Van Dyke's character in the film, Maureen Stapleton is just six months older than Van Dyke. In both versions, Hugo refers to Conrad as a "thief of love" and prevents the kiss by running out on stage and then punches Conrad in the face as he leans in to kiss Kim, however, the results are different. In both versions, Mr. MacAfee is a World War II veteran and strong conservative who is utterly dismayed at the Baby Boomer generation. The original stage production of Bye Bye Birdie had no real speaking role for the character of Hugo Peabody, but the movie script was re-written specifically to expand the part for Bobby Rydell. Deleting the scene where Conrad is falsely accused of trying to seduce his teenage fan by sitting an empty crate next to hers and putting his arm around her while they are alone at an enclosed low barn-like structure, may have been an attempt to make the film more family friendly. When Rosie and Albert get back together at the film's end, it is because Conrad's being a guest in Sweet Apple is over as he goes into the army. Ed Sullivan was embarrassed by the Broadway production's choral hymn praising him and his weekly TV variety show as he was watching the play with his wife. He was quoted as saying "I only wanted the floor to open up and swallow us both." Even though Sullivan disliked being mentioned in the Broadway show, he actually agreed to make a cameo in the film, saying that his willingness to appear in the film would show the public that he was a relatable guy with a sense of humor. He later performed a life-imitates-art routine when he reprised the "One Last Kiss" segment for real when Gary Lewis, the lead singer of the band Gary Lewis & The Playboys, performed the song and kissed a fan, who was a lucky girl from Sullivan's audience to receive it, shortly before his actual draft induction into the U.S. army as part of a publicity stunt. The lead character, Conrad Birdie, is a parody of Elvis Presley and ironically, the show's producers originally wanted Presley as an obvious first choice for the role of Birdie because he was the inspiration for the story, and he was interested, as the play was based upon the furor that arose from him being drafted in 1957. But his manager, Colonel Tom Parker, rejected the idea as he did not want Presley in any roles that were parodies of himself, so he refused to let the rock-and-roll legend play a role spoofing himself, or any that would be interpreted as such. Jesse Pearson’s first role for TV or film, but his Hollywood career didn’t take off, and he would appear in only one other film after this: Advance To The Rear, a military comedy with Glenn Ford. However, he guest-starred in a few television comedy programs including McHale's Navy, The Beverly Hillbillies, and The Andy Griffith Show. The poet Rod McKuen who hired Pearson for voice work on his album The Sea Trilogy, wrote on his web site: "Jesse Pearson was a very talented man and deserved a much bigger and longer career than he had." In the promotional material for the film, Ann Margret wears a tight red dress and stiletto heels, and has her legs in the air. The role of Rosie was originated on Broadway by Chita Rivera, so Hollywood veteran Janet Leigh donned a black wig for the film. According to a June 20, 1962, newspaper clipping, Leigh went to a party with the wig on, and her friends didn’t readily recognize her in the wig. However, Rita Moreno was the initial choice for the role of Rosie in the film, but turned down the part, since she was disappointed in many of the stage roles she was getting because they were too stereotypical for her taste, and she didn’t want to be typecast. The title song "Bye Bye, Birdie" performed by Ann-Margret, which opens at the beginning and closes the end of the film, was written specifically for the screen version and was not from the original Tony-winning Broadway stage musical. The sheet music of Conrad's next hit song, "Mumbo Jumbo Gooey Gumbo," which Albert picks up from the piano in his first scene, is the same music as the title tune. An episode of Mad Men paid homage to the sequence of the title song by having an advertising agency create an advertisement for Patio, a sugar-free diet cola marketed as a soda alternative for diabetics by pitching their product with the intended target of young women who are trying to maintain their figures as a tool for staying slim, while an Ann-Margret wannabe imitates the "Bye Bye, Birdie" song and recreates exact frame-by-frame copy of the sequence to the film in the ad with "bye bye, Birdie" changed to "bye bye, sugar" to assert how their product says "bye-bye" to extra pounds and inches. Ann-Margret has said that when she and her husband Roger Smith saw this tribute, tears welled up in their eyes because it was so kind and loving. In one episode of the BBC television program Keeping Up Appearances, the song "Put On A Happy Face" is used as dance music aboard the QE2 when Hyacinth Bucket finds out that her brother-in-law Onslow won a cruise from horse racing. Category:Movies